Both the RF and IF gain of a television may be automatically controlled to improve picture quality. The RF gain may be controlled under high signal strength conditions and the IF gain under low signal strength conditions.
Both gains may be controlled using a signal from the TV's digital demodulator and/or the TV's analog demodulator, but as recognized herein this scheme can result in large distortions particularly when cable signals are received (i.e., in a cable mode of the TV). The distortion in turn causes picture deterioration in the analog channel, and result in pixellation errors or no picture at all for digital channels. Alternatively, the RF gain can be controlled using the tuner output (i.e., the IF signal produced by the tuner prior to demodulation), but this can introduce undesirable noise, again resulting in, e.g., pixellation errors or no picture at all for digital channels.
Having recognized these drawbacks, the solutions below are provided.